I recently accepted a friend's invitation to go through 12 weeks of journal-writing and creativity exercises together using the book The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. I'm three weeks into this intriguing process and in the third chapter Cameron discusses the idea of synchronicity, "We like to pretend it is hard to follow our heart's dreams. The truth is, it is difficult to avoid walking through the many doors that will open. Turn aside your dream and it will come back to you again. Get willing to follow it again and a second mysterious door will swing open."
I know I'm not alone when I say that this is an incredibly busy time of year. I've been busy with the usual holiday preparations but also very busy making new art and accepting new art opportunities when they arrive.
This week the Diva gave us all a second chance to try out the ideas of Reticula and Fragments. There's that door swinging open again, and this time I'm saying yes.
Diva Challenges #294 and #295
reticula and fragments
for diva challenge #294
reticula and fragments in offset grid
for diva challenge #295
I've been wishing for more chances to connect in person with other artists and hopefully meet mentors for my art learning journey. An internet search for local art classes a few months back helped me discover the nearby artEAST art center. They have a variety of classes just as I was hoping to find, but they also have opportunities for sharing studio time with other local artists. Yes!
I've already posted about the wonderful evening workshop on printmaking I took last month but I also enrolled in a colored pencil realism class that meets once a week. The class size is so small that everyone gets one-on-one time to be mentored by the instructor.
Realism takes a lot of time but I have some work in progress to show. I like how you can see the various stages and layers that each petal will go through from just the wispy beginning of an outline to fully saturated with color.
purple hydrangeas, work in progress: colored pencil
tulips, work in progress: colored pencil
I have been wanting some guidance in getting better at drawing people and places. Craftsy, a resource for online crafting and art classes, has been offering a ton of holiday specials lately. I snatched up a few drawing classes on urban sketching and capturing likenesses. Here's some of my "homework" (click the thumbnails to see a larger version).
I've been dreaming, and I've been practicing, and synchronicity has been bringing me opportunities to practice and dream some more. What are you saying yes to?
Pattern. If you know only one thing about Zentangle, you know that it's all about pattern!
pat·ternˈpadərn/noun1. a repeated decorative design. 2. the repetition of specific visual elements such as a unit of shape or form.
Diva Challenge #293: Keeko
Some of the simplest visual elements you can repeat to create pattern are dots, lines, curves and circles. Keeko taps into this fundamental aspect of pattern design with an elegant simplicity. This simple building block can be a source of meditative repetition or inspire a curious "what if...?"
Keeko, Arc Flower for Diva #293
Keeko in 3D on a warped grid
for Diva #293
It's A String Thing #171
For some reason, I have never really embraced the Zentangle pattern Crescent Moon, another fundamentally basic pattern. I didn't find it very pleasing to draw and frankly I've avoided it. When this week's String Adventure called for Seawave (which I feel in love with instantly) combined with Crescent Moon (my nemesis!), I knew I had to find some inspiration.
On Pinterest I found a be-fescue'd version that I find absolutely delightful. I have to give credit to Mary Bartrop (CZT13) for making me a Crescent Moon convert! Shout-out to Lily Moon and Helen Williams for their inspiring versions as well. I've pinned a few to my Patterns and Tangles board if you want to check them out. Once I've found some inspiration, here's one way that I use my sketch book to record inspiration and to help me generate ideas.
use your sketchbook to generate ideas
And here's the tile I created after finding a way to love Crescent Moon after all and marry it with that deliciously textured and organic pattern Seawave.
Crescent Moon, Seawave
for IAST #171
The Zentangle Method naturally incorporates many of the classic principles of design while still allowing for a relaxed and improvisational experience. I like to use my sketchbook to try out new ideas and consider questions of contrast, balance, and rhythm in the context of these patterns we call Tangles. Then when I sit down with my pen and a tile, I take a deep breath and allow those explorations to blossom into a complete thought.
What about you? Which principles of design come naturally to you when you tangle?
It's been a stressful week in the United States, capping a long and divisive election cycle. One aspect of my personality is that it's very easy for me to soak up other people's worries, fears, stresses and add them to my own.
"In our always-on, always-connected world of television, social media, and on-demand everything, it can be stupidly easy to spend your entire day consuming information and simply responding to all of the inputs that bombard your life.
"Art offers an outlet and a release from all of that. Take a minute to ignore all of the incoming signals and create an outgoing one instead. Produce something. Express yourself in some way. As long as you contribute rather than consume, anything you do can be a work of art." -- James Clear, Make More Art: The Health Benefits of Creativity
It's probably no surprise that making art has been a very useful coping technique for me lately. Here's what I've been up to...
This week theDiva challenged us to use CZT Nadine Roller's tangle Eaxy. I chose to pair that high-focus, geometric pattern with the curvy, flowing lines of l'Eaura by CZT Ria Matheussen. I sometimes find it hard to blend straight line tangles with more organic ones, but I really enjoy the contrast that this combination creates.
Eaxy, L'Eaura for Diva Challenge #292
A bunch of new art opportunities have opened up for me lately, one of which was a night out with a very dear friend to take a printmaking class at artEAST Art Center and Gallery. My Zentangle practice got a chance to cross-over to this new-to-me media as I carved simple repetitive marks to indicate the texture of owl feathers on this printing block.
On the right, the block I carved with an owl on a branch.
On the left, a print I pulled from the block using black ink on white paper.
In the class we printed our newly carved blocks multiple times and using different colors of ink, making several small editions.
A variety of block-printing ink colors allows for lots of printing options.
Jalousie, Shing, Tagh, Fescur, Mooka, Msst, Hurakan
for the Halloween themed Diva Challenge #291
When I was younger, I loved exploring art materials and I deeply envied certain friends who created incredible art. Some time in my teens, when my own drawings didn't live up to the images in my head, I believed that I just wasn't as naturally talented or artistic as the peers I admired.
Around the same time I received lots of encouragement from teachers for the essays I was writing in school. Getting the ideas in my head down on paper in an orderly fashion seemed to come easily for me. It felt like the opposite of drawing. I figured that I was meant to continue to pursue writing but that making art was not in my future.
Today I believe that the passion, commitment, patience, and hours of practice accomplished artists put into their work often gets mis-characterized as "natural talent."
For this week's Diva Challenge #289 we looked to nature and the falling Autumn leaves. The maple tree in my front yard dropped this green one a few days ago and then overnight the rest on the tree turned a brilliant gold.
I decided to use CZT Lynn Mead's technique for "zentwining" around my leaf shape. For a little while I got really attached to how it looked at this initial stage and I was wary of doing more to the tile and potentially messing it up.
But there are no mistakes in Zentangle, right? Or rather, only opportunities to honor what shows up and to "fail forward."
work in progress: zentwining patterned ribbons
"To be afraid of failure is to be afraid to learn. Failure is a wonderful way to experience life, because life is a learning experience. When I fail I should rejoice, because I am closer to finding what works! Yay failing!" -- Seb Barnett
This hesitation reminded me of a conversation I had recently with artist and educator Kirsten Wilhelm when I attended a two-day studio workshop at Northwest Encaustics in Seattle. I was struggling with where to go next on one of my paintings when Kirsten advised me to "kill my little darlings" which is a reference to some age-old writing advice that advocates ruthless editing for the good over the overall work.
Kirsten's approach to teaching de-emphasized the importance of a final result and prioritized experimentation, pushing boundaries, and going too far in order to really know what "far enough" looks like. When she heard people start to worry over a piece, as I was, she repeated this light-hearted mantra: "If you're not failing, then you're doing something wrong!"
Here's what happened when I kept developing this autumn leaf-inspired tile. I think, at the very least, this stage keeps the eye more interested than the original.
Autumn Leaf with Zentwine for Diva #289
on 6" x 6" bristol paper
Letting go of my attachment to the original drawing is a practice in itself that bears repeating. Artist Jane Davies kills her little darlings as part of creating the depth and dimension that is so integral to her signature style.
"I like to build layers on the canvas or paper to build in a sort of history and the sense that there is something under the surface. Which there is. There's -- I swear there's masterpieces under there but I've just covered them all up. Yeah, I paint over a lot of stuff. I get attached to the parts that I really spent a lot of time on and worked and worked and worked. But okay, I'm attached to it and I paint over it. Now we've got a new beginning." -- Jane Davies
I've got one last group challenge piece for week to share with you. Here's where I started my tile for It's A String Thing adventure #167:
work in progress: Ponio, Winflo for IAST #167
Again, I was ready to leave it at this stage. There's a certain elegance in simplicity, like an uncluttered room. But there wasn't much interaction between the tangles. In the spirit of failing forward I pushed it a little further.
Almost certainly the Winflo and Ponio designs could still have more interaction, but for now this is where I leave it.
Ponio and Winflo for IAST 167 on traditional Zentangle tile
By the way, encaustic a painting technique that uses pigments mixed with hot wax and manipulated with fire. Here's a peak at one of my creations from the workshop. Follow me on Instagram to see more!
It's been a while since my last post. One thing or another took my focus this past few weeks. Today I learned some terrible news that a beautiful soul lost the battle with depression and took their own life. Seb Barnett was an incredible artist who inspired me and encouraged me. I wish I'd known you better when I had the chance. The world is less bright without you in it.
I remember that Seb often railed against the idea of artistic "talent" as something you either had or you didn't. Instead Seb championed the notion that accomplished artists were the ones who put years and years of work into honing their craft.
So here I am, back at it with blogging my progress, still at the beginning of my journey, trying to follow your lead and put the work in.
Diva Challenge #287
I started with a watercolor background, created the design using Staedtler fineliner pens, and then I deepened the color shading with Neocolor II watersoluble crayons and Prismacolor colored pencils. I learned a valuable lesson about the way that finely sharpened colored pencils can sometimes scratch through the softer, more fibrous watercolor paper I was using for this piece. You might notice that one of the abstract orb shapes looks a bit more like a pearl than the others. That one got a bit of Liquid Pearls paint to cover the damaged paper.
Windsor & Newton watercolor in Transparent Yellow and Quinacridone Magenta
Work in progress, after inking the design I added shading with watersoluble crayon and colored pencil
Diva Challenge #287 on watercolor tile Dreamcatcher, Nebel, Yincut, and Sandswirl
Daniel Lamothe's Dreamcatcher pattern is quite stunning all on it's own. Here I let it take center stage with a mandala-like circular symmetry. I used a Uniball Signo white ink pen and a white chalk pastel pencil on coal black Strathmore sketch paper. I was inspired to try my hand at the convergent shading technique shared by Lynn Mead.
It's been a week of recovery over here. We had a fabulous time with our homeschooling community down in Portland but three out of five of us came down with a cold upon our return. It's a common enough occurrence that folks call it "the conference crud."
We didn't travel far, or for very long, but it feels like the seasons changed while we were gone. Crispy fall leaves are already littering the yard and the apples on our backyard tree are almost ready to eat. I guess the change in weather went well with my need to curl up with a blanket and many cups of tea to nurse my sore throat. Feeling much better today, thank goodness!
I did manage to complete the weekly It's A String Thing Challenge #161, so that's one silver lining to being home-bound this week. I see a little of fall in this tile: russet for the maple leaves out front with hints of blue skies.
Sharla uses a variety of chalk pastel pencils to complement the variety of ink colors. Since I have a set of soft chalk pastel sticks, I decided to try them out. The chalky pastel blends well with the graphite shading in a way that waxy Prismacolor pencils just won't. It's a technique I think I'll keep in my toolbox.
I enjoy participating in these group art adventures because there is always something I learn from working through the specific weekly challenge as well as from seeing what unique solutions are arrived at by the other artists. I have some art goals for myself in different media as well, and I was reminded of those this weekend when sharing some of my art with friends I hadn't seen since starting this blog. I really want to draw and paint people, especially figures and faces. I managed to get in some figure-sketching time yesterday and it feels good to get back to working on that goal again.
I sketched maybe a half dozen poses and there was one that I felt could go further and become a small painting study. I scanned my sketch and printed out a copy to practice painting the figure. I have to admit that drawing and painting feel worlds apart for me, at least for now. Gotta keep making those pancakes...
Tomorrow my family is heading out of town for a five-day excursion down to Portland, Oregon to gather with a few hundred other homeschoolers. This annual trip is a highlight of our year and a chance to reunite with far-flung friends and an opportunity to make new ones. Five days filled with fun for the whole family as well as sharing support with other parents for the process of facilitating our kids's educations.
In light of my weekend travel plans, you get a mid-week post!
This week the Diva's challenge to "spill it!" encouraged me to explore the intuitive process of art a little more deeply. No set string, no pre-planned tangles or patterns, just the opportunity to invite chaos and chance into my art practice and respond intuitively to what arrives.
I've been admiring tiles splashed with watercolor lately and so that's what I decided to use for the "spill it" challenge. First I splashed some watercolors and then I spilled some salt.
watercolor drips, splashes, and spills
I used the smooth side of one piece of Canson watercolor paper and one piece of Strathmore Printmaking paper because I didn't want too much surface texture of the paper to interfere with the tangling later on with my Pigma Micron pens.
I used Windsor & Newton watercolors in Transparent Yellow and Quinacridone Magenta because I really enjoy the combination of yellows, pinks, and oranges they make together and being transparent colors I knew they would blend beautifully without getting muddy.
When everything was dry, I cut both papers into ten 4" by 4" tiles.
4in x 4in tiles splashed with watercolor
I chose this tile because the long leggy drip of watercolor across an area of white space immediately brought to mind the tangle Quandu by CZT Eni Oken. That was the start of my intuitive process.
beginning to intuitively tangle the organic shapes created by the watercolor
I continued to follow the drips, splashes, and spills, filling an irregular shape with Aura-leah, another with Printemps and Flux-like weeds. When a lone Poke Leaf showed up in those Fluxy weeds, I knew that more Poke Leaf and some Poke Root would have to find a home somewhere in the tile. More of each tangle here and there, then joined by Footlites and many orbs and auras. I know that I could keep developing this tile with shading and highlights, but for now it just feels finished. I decided to listen to that feeling.
Have you ever had the experience where an art technique seems just out of your reach? I feel that way every time I see a Zentangle renaissance tile where the tangler has artfully mixed black, brown, and red ink with shading and highlights on that mid-toned tan paper. I have made quite a few attempts with frustrating results. I just couldn't seem to achieve the effect I so admired. I was feeling really stumped! Recently I remembered a technique called "copy-cat" that can be used to accelerate the process when you want to learn something new. I was introduced to this technique in the context of learning new languages, but learning accelerators are techniques that can be applied to any kind of learning. So why not apply it to art?
(Follow the links to read more about copy-cat and Evan's project!) First I gathered examples of renaissance tiles that I admired or that had an effect I want to learn how to achieve, and I saved them to a new Zentangle Renaissance Tiles Pinterest board.
Then I started trying to identify what it is that makes these particular tiles so intriguing and engaging. This was the "seeing effective performance" step. I noticed that I really liked white highlights that popped, that I liked the contrast of the red/brown ink against the black, especially when used within the same tangle, and that I liked the tiles where red/brown shading accented red/brown ink. The next step in this using this technique to accelerate learning would be to attempt to duplicate a few of my favorite parts of these tiles until I felt like I was able to recreate the results I so admired. This is a step that I can return to again and again to deepen my understanding. If you want to try this yourself, why not try CZT Adele Bruno's tangle Sand. Her step-out shows an example on a renaissance tile. A perfect way to get started!
Next I gave myself a whole page in my tan sketchbook to create some tangles, make mistakes, and hopefully discover some successes, continuing to try to copy-cat the techniques I observed but applying them to a variety of patterns.
In this practice page, I want to especially call out the El Prado by CZT Maria Tovar because here I am using a version inspired by The Ragged Ray. Copy-cat two ways!
My practice page helped me see what combinations of ink color, chalk pencil, and graphite or colored pencil shading I liked best out of my experiments. So I continued to practice those combinations in this week's challenge tiles. The Diva's Weekly Challenge #281 This week the Diva challenged herself (and us!) to get more familiar with the geometric tangle ING. I filled the triangular spaces of my ING spires in different ways and put a Fleavy-inspired background behind it.
Diva Challenge #281
ING, Fleavy
It's A String Thing Adventure #159 This week's challenge was to use Printemps, Partay, and Palrevo in a double-lined spiral string. I decided to use the aura'd variation of Partay that CZT Margaret Bremner showed when introducing the tangle and to mix it in with the overlapped Printemps. I used the grid-based Palrevo in the spaces created by the double-line of the string. I think it looks a bit like a layer cake!
IAST #159
Printemps, Partay, Palrevo
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"Go for the Gold" is a phrase I grew up hearing, an idea that encourages us to dream big and work hard toward those dreams, to give your best, like the Olympic Athletes who strive to land the most difficult vaults, set new world records, be the first person to breakdown an old barrier.
I was inspired by this idea and by Olympic rings with the crown of Flux on the Diva's own challenge tile this week. I chose interlocking rings as my string and the tangle Fleavy by Linda Farmer, CZT in gold and silver metallic gel pen on black paper. I've been seeing some lovely tiles using this tangle and it was one I wanted to add to my toolbox of go-to patterns.
Gold and Silver Fleavy rings 6" x 6" metallic gel pen on black paper for Diva Challenge #280
Inside the rings I continued with a pattern that is essentially a collection of curvy auras, Fleavy without the leaves, using Hollibaugh's drawing-behind technique. I'm not sure if this pattern has it's own name or not. If you know of a name for it, please leave me a comment and let me know!
This pattern in the center was made with some of the Gelly Roll Moonlight Stardust pens. I noticed as I tested out my materials on a scrap, that the main color of the Moonlight pens (green and blue in this case) soaked into the black paper leaving only a thinner line of the silver and gold sparkle behind. It was an interesting way to be able to achieve different line weights and keep the center pattern from overwhelming the Fleavy rings.
metallic and moonlight stardust Sakura gelly roll pens
In this week's string adeventure, CZT Adele Bruno challenges us to use the new tangle Drogon by blogger and artist Lilly Moon and our own favorite or "Gold Medal" tangles. I've been using group challenges to push me out of my comfort zone for the last several months, learning new tangles every week. So I had to flip back through my sketchbooks and older tiles to recall my go-to patterns. Classic Zentagle patterns Mooka, Poke Leaf, Flux, and Zinger were shoo-ins. Nebel is a newer addition I've come to appreciate, and Niuroda is another new-to-me tangle I have been itching to try out. Oh, and I sprinkled a tiny bit of Cruffle in there as well.
Drogon, Mooka, Poke Leaf, Flux, Zinger, Nebel, Niuroda, Cruffle line art for IAST #158
Drogon, Mooka, Poke Leaf, Flux, Zinger, Nebel, Niuroda, Cruffle for IAST #158 after shading
Focusing on these dedicated Olympic athletes and the Olympic Rings that symbolize their dreams and achievements reminds me of a visual representation of Ikigai, an idea about finding one's purpose.
Ikigai, according to the article on Wikipedia, is "a Japanese concept meaning 'a reason for being'. Everyone, according to the Japanese, has an ikigai. Finding it requires a deep and often lengthy search of self."
The flash fiction story of who I am, the sound-bite I put in my profile these days is: reader, writer, mother, dancer, dreamer, artist. My life has evolved from one focus to another, one 'reason for being' to another. As a homeschooling mama, in raising my kids and facilitating an education for them, I find myself in that intersecting space between passion and vocation. I hope to guide them to be compassionate people who do good in the world, so I think I see some mission in there as well. Right now I feel like I am in the passion stage as an artist. Art is what I love and learning new things is something I am pretty good at, so this journey where I am learning to make art that I love is a pretty fabulous place to be. Next though, next I want to enter the mission stage. Making art that the world needs? That sounds amazing. What about you? If you are reading this blog, have you found a place in your life where PASSION meets MISSION?
Zentangle tiles are quite small at 3.5" by 3.5" so as to be something one can complete in a short amount of time. This constraint is another aspect of how the Zentangle Method is such an accessible art practice. In terms of taking on a new hobby and beginning a meditation practice, there is a convenience to knowing a simple tile can be completed in half an hour, or a complex one with detailed texture and shading in an afternoon. But given the small size of these pieces, scale is a principle of design that I often forget to take into account. In art, scale refers to the size of one object in relation to another. Variety of scale is an important part of creating a dynamic artwork. When I first started drawing this way, I made every pattern the same scale. I think seeing other tanglers' creations for the Adventures in Monotangles was the first place I recognized how varying the scale of a pattern could transform it. I challenged myself to try to work with tangles in more than one scale on each of my tiles this week.
Diva Challenge #279: Duotangle Meer vs Auraknot What stands out about auraknot to me is the way the ordered drawing-behind technique creates a weaving quality. What I like best about meer is the wavy ridge down the center that allows me to play with the idea of surfaces that face towards and away from the light. I used a Promarker Watercolor marker in Cerulean Blue for the gem and orbs, and I used Prismacolor markers in two shades of warm gray (30% and 50%) for the shading this time. I'm not sure if I achieved as much depth and contrast in the shading as I usually do when using graphite.
Duotangle: Auraknot vs Meer
It's a String Thing #157 With new tangle Abeko, a change of scale was easy as varying the size of the loops as I followed the spiral string in this week's prompt. Phroz has so many shapes within shapes that it needs some room to turn out right, but it was fun to pop a much larger version in the lower corner and bring out the 3D aspect of the pattern with shading.
IAST #157 Abeko, Phroz 6" x 6"
One reason that I am considering scale these days is that I have been having trouble with eye strain from working so detailed and so small. I've started cutting my own 6" x 6" tiles to make things easier on my eyes. Even at 6" x 6", these diminutive works are tiny delights with all the minute detail, the way small wobbles of line are packed tightly together creating a whimsy and an authenticity. What an impact then to see this type of art magnified to a much larger size, say taking up an entire wall? Looks like fun to me!
